


Reversal of Fortune

by TinyFakeFanficRock



Series: Ad meliora [12]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Misogyny, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Slavery, Tribal Courier, Vulpes Inculta is a gross person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-04-07 19:38:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14088204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinyFakeFanficRock/pseuds/TinyFakeFanficRock
Summary: The Courier goes to The Fort.  It doesn't go quite the way she thought it would.





	1. Chapter 1

She couldn't hide from it forever. Mel knew she would have to go east, meet _him_ in his own lair, stand before Caesar, even. Oh, and whatever it was she was supposed to do with Mr. House's deadly robots. Securitrons with missile launchers frightened her far less than her husband and his puppetmaster. Scared or not, though, she couldn't put off the trip any longer.

Sure, she had told Cass she wouldn't do anything _he_ commanded anymore, but Mr. House had given the same order quite clearly, and if she refused, she feared he would throw them all out of the Lucky 38. That was no problem for _her_. Her delivery finally made, she could return to the Mojave Express, ask to be sent out on a very long western route, sign up in a different office with a new name, and hope the Legion kept _him_ too busy with Hoover Dam to pursue her until her trail had gone cold again. But it wouldn't be fair to the friends who had helped her. How could she send Veronica back to the "family" who treated her with suspicion at best, Raul to his lonely little shack, Craig to his memories in Novac, or Cass to a likely descent into cirrhosis?

And, of course, there was her husband to consider. His patience was waning; that much was clear after the first few flower deliveries. Mel was surprised how much of his old code she remembered even before she found Mr. House's copy of _The Language of Flowers_. If a bouquet or an envelope containing a picture had red thread tied around it, she was to report the meaning of its contents to Musca, his most trusted Frumentarius. Those were status reports, or responses to questions: most commonly, poinsettia said things were going well, evening primrose said things were changing, and red and yellow carnations said _yes_ and _no_ , respectively.

She asked her husband once why he sent these messages through her instead of directly to his confederates. He ran a hand through her hair, smiled, and said, "No one questions a man sending flowers to his beloved wife." Then he laughed, ironic and chilling, and she regretted asking.

It did explain why he bothered sending messages tied in white thread, meaning they were addressed to her. They concealed the reason for his other packages. More than that, though, they were reminders that even from afar, he still had eyes on her. She'd learned that painfully, too.

A week into one of her husband's trips, a young Legionary beckoned to her on her way back from the well. She was terrified until she recognized him. It was Guajillo, -- no, Plancus now, -- a two-years-younger cousin of hers who'd chosen fighting over crucifixion. In halting, heavily-accented Latin, he asked after her welfare, and the fates of some of their younger cousins. She reassured him as best she could with lies about herself and what little truth she knew about the others; he clasped her hand briefly in thanks, and they returned to their duties.

Two weeks later she received a white-thread bundle of three yellow roses, some red geraniums, and a devil's hand blossom. They were all new to her, so she looked them up: _infidelity, stupidity, warning._ She didn't understand until the morning after he returned, when she went to get water and found Plancus dead by the well, his throat cut and a devil's hand shoved in his mouth. When her husband sent another of those flowers to the Lucky 38 last week, she had nightmares of her cousin's uncomprehending stare for the next three days.

Mel meant it when she replied with the hemlock that if her choices were return to him or die, he would have to kill her. But it wasn't just her anymore. He knew her friends now -- even if she fled and told them nothing, he would still track, interrogate, and kill them simply because he could. Last night she dreamt it was Craig lying beside the well. She couldn't let that happen, not to any of them.

But she also risked them if she went: one of them would have to accompany her to deal with whatever was in Mr. House's bunker. _That_ was the part that had her falling asleep beside the Big Book of Science series night after night. She understood a little more than she used to, but it would take her ages to learn to hack even the easiest computer, let alone attain the competence Arcade, Veronica, or Raul had.

It was time she didn't have. She didn't want to dream of any more of her friends lying dead in Flagstaff, and feared _he_ might start leaving them dead on the Strip if she delayed much longer. She had to go soon, and with one of her friends beside her.

What could Caesar want with her? She replayed the conversation outside the Tops in her mind hundreds of times, trying to figure out where the traps were hidden. Her husband wasn't trustworthy, of course, but he kept to the letter of his word, if rarely the spirit. She knew all too well that he was very, very good at weaving lies out of truth. White Tank had taught her that much. She shuddered, realizing he wore their doomed leader's hat to their meeting outside The Tops despite it being too big for him. In a language far simpler than that of the flowers, it conveyed two messages in one. First: _They died for their defiance -- would you do the same?_

He knew she wouldn't. She played her part at White Tank like a good little accomplice and killed all those people with her cowardice as surely as her husband had with his drugs and knives. That was its second meaning: _Do as you're told, like you've always done._ And at the moment, she had no better option. Mel checked her right pocket for the Platinum Chip, took a deep breath, and got moving.

\---

She hadn't expected to confront another flower message this soon, but Arcade, face resolute, held out a yellow carnation grabbed from the downstairs vase. "Sorry, not interested in a trip to Fascism Central. You shouldn't be, either." He waved the carnation to make the point he couldn't aloud -- not on the open casino floor, anyway. Cass at the bar was no issue, but Veronica and Raul were disassembling a slot machine nearby, and it wasn't complicated enough to hold their attention for long.

She allowed herself a sigh. "You know I won't help them, Arcade. At least, I _hope_ you do."

"Then why go at all?" he asked her with a mixture of exasperation and puzzlement.

"Mr. House wants me to get into a building there." She spread her hands to tell him she didn't have more details. "It sounds like it's a lot of technology, which means the Legion probably doesn't understand it, or want to. Maybe they've stayed away from it altogether."

He looked down at her over the tops of his glasses. " _Sounds like_ , _probably_ , and _maybe_ are not the basis for an excursion this antithetical to self-preservation, Mel."

"Arcade, I'm only asking you because I can't do this alone." When she first said it, she was thinking of her inability to handle the computers. She had to look away from him when she realized it was true in another sense. Much as she hated to admit it, the idea of having someone else at her side -- a friend -- gave her some comfort.

But when she raised her eyes back to his, Arcade's face actually softened. Ugh. He was feeling sorry for her again. If this turned into another attempt to get her to talk to a doctor about the years in Flagstaff, she might just go on her own no matter how stupid an idea that was.

Annoying as the pity was, it seemed to work. He flushed, then started swearing in Latin about why he had to go and make friends with people who didn't have the sense of a Brahmin with venereal disease. Mel was just about to remind him she understood everything he was saying, but clamped her mouth shut when she saw Veronica breezing toward them. "Aww, Mel, did you tell him puns actually aren't funny or something? No, wait, he's not crying. So what is it?"

"I just talked him into going with me to Caesar's Fort."

Veronica blinked several times, staggered by this in a way she never was in combat. "You -- you what? Why?"

"Mr. House gave me a job there, and to do it, I'm going to need someone who knows about tech. That narrows it down to Raul and you two. I'm afraid they'll mistake Raul for a feral before we get close enough to correct them, and I am not taking a woman to the Fort. So I asked Arcade."

"Well, then, I suppose that's decided," Arcade said, brushing his hands together with false cheer. "When am I setting off on this _delightful_ little adventure?"

Mel had expected the asperity in his voice, and chose not to exacerbate it by discussing the matter further. "Tonight, preferably right after dinner," she said, and stepped into the elevator.

Once the doors closed, she let out a heavy exhale. She was glad Arcade was coming with her, but the coercion -- however softly done -- weighed on her conscience. Giving orders and manipulating people was how _he_ did things. Mel shook her head and told Victor to surprise her with one of the hotel floors; he chose the sixteenth, and she paced its hallways, trying to burn off at least a little nervous energy.

Veronica found her there about twenty minutes later. "Okay, what's the real reason I can't go to The Fort?"

Easy question. "That was the real reason."

Her frustrated exhale actually rippled the edge of her hood. "What are you afraid they're going to do, make me a slave or something?"

 _Safe enough to be honest for now._ "Yes. That is exactly what I am afraid of."

"You're a woman, too, you know. What makes you think they'll treat you any different?" She leaned against the wall, arms folded, expression clearly saying _got you there_.

"They've given me safe passage because I have something they need. That will at least keep them off me in the early going." She paused. _Tell her? ... Not yet._ "After that, though, I'm willing to take that risk, but I'm not willing to ask you to do it when there's another way."

Her lips pursed as if she wanted to argue, but finally Veronica conceded. "Dammit, Mel, that sounds so reasonable. I don't even want to punch anything when you put it like that."

"Glad to hear it," Mel told her. _Well, dodged that bullet. Bullet -- Craig -- oh, hell, I need to go tell him where I'm going. Best he hears it from me._

\---

She found Craig half-dozing in a chair in the rec room, an open copy of Guns and Bullets beginning a slow slide from his lap. Mel leaned in, steadied the book with one hand so it wouldn't fall and startle him, and then paused. The entire prospect of this conversation filled her with an irrational dread, but it had to be done. "Sorry to bother you," she finally said quietly, ready to dodge if he woke up flailing again.

He didn't, only jerked his head upright, flicked his eyes around, then asked, "Time to go?"

She settled the book back in his hands and stood up straight again. "For me, yes. I'm taking Arcade to do some technical stuff for Mr. House. I'd tell you more, but I don't know the details and probably wouldn't understand them if I did. We should be gone five days at the most." That was the part that wouldn't cause problems. _You have to tell him the rest,_ she ordered the cowardly part of her that wanted to leave it at that. _Don't make him find out afterward._

But he was already responding. "'Kay. I'll get my stuff." He leaned forward to stand.

Quickly she held up a hand; for some reason she wanted him to stay seated. "You're not going."

"Huh?" He cocked his head, clearly surprised.

She retreated a few steps. "I've -- I've got to go someplace I can't take you. Or, well, shouldn't yet."

He was watching her closely now, trying to read her. "Where's that?"

She swallowed hard and made herself say it. "The Fort."

"Dunno why I can't go there. It's just the Followers." Oh, God, he still didn't realize.

"The _other_ Fort, Craig."

He was on his feet in an instant; she darted several steps back instinctively, putting the pool table between them. "The fuck you doing that for?"

She took a breath to steady herself and replied, "I told you: Mr. House gave me a job to do there. I'm going to go in, do it, and get the hell out again."

"The hell you are," he snapped, but made no further moves toward her.

She took a firm grip on the rail of the pool table and recovered her resolve. "I wasn't asking your permission." She said it slowly and grimly, staring him down: much as she liked him, Craig needed to know he did _not_ control her.

He looked away and dropped back onto his chair heavily enough that it creaked in protest. "I still don't like it," he muttered.

Mel let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. "You don't have to."

"We should just kill them and then do whatever House wants." There was worry on his face rather than anger. At least he didn't think she was going there to make an alliance; it would have been hard to forgive that.

"Much as I'd like to, Mr. House asked me to go look in a bunker there. He did not ask me to declare war on his behalf. When we kill them -- and someday soon we will -- I don't want to be representing anyone else's interests." She put a lighter note into her voice. "We want the credit for killing Caesar, don't we?"

He tried to smile at that, but he was still clearly troubled. "Mel, I just don't want you to get --"

She cut him off; that sounded like the start of something dangerously sentimental. "I'm going; you're not; that's final. Be finished sulking by the time I get back."

Once she was in the hallway, she heard him muttering, and then the clack of pool balls, only a little louder than usual. Mel found herself strangely conflicted: the conversation had gone how she'd expected, but it still left her with both a sense of anticlimax and slightly shaking hands. She opened up her pack and took inventory until she was ready to face the others again.

\---

Dinner was usually a lively affair, with Veronica and Arcade trading rapid-fire banter, punctuated by Cass and Raul's wry asides and Lily's laughter -- or scolding, depending on the topic. Tonight, however, Arcade had taken a plate to his room to eat while he finished packing, and his absence, together with Mel's pack waiting by the door, cast an almost eerie silence over the table.

Of course Cass was the one to break it. "So you're really gonna go to the Fort like the fuckhead wants," she said, slurring a little more than usual, her tone teetering between angry and worried.

"It doesn't have anything to do with Caesar's wishes. I got a direct order from our host." Mel doubted _the fuckhead_ had actually referred to Caesar, but preferred to reinforce that assumption for the others.

"Does Boone know?" Veronica asked, gesturing toward his empty seat, itself not unusual -- Craig often ate after the others even on good days. "You're not just gonna leave without telling him ... right?"

"'Cause he's grouchy enough as it is," Raul put in, reaching for another helping of meat pie.

"Craig and I already argued about it. He lost."

"The poor boy. I'll make him some cookies," Lily rumbled, clearly happy for another opportunity to coddle one of them. She debated aloud what to bake, using truly strange words like _snickerdoodles_ , for the rest of dinner.

Afterward, as Mel washed the dishes and Veronica dried and stowed them, the tension started to creep back in. Then Raul said, "Hey, you know what Tabitha used to call the Legion? 'Battle cattle'. It always had me picturing gun-toting pack Brahmin. Let me know if they actually have any, huh, boss?"

Mel drained the now-empty sink, turned to him, and grinned. "I'll be sure to check," she told him.

Arcade peeked around the corner, so she slung her pack onto her shoulder and headed for the elevator.

"Mel, you're a good friend," Cass blurted out with a distinct air of _just in case I never see you again_.

Mel turned back for a moment, took a firm hold on her shoulder, and looked her directly in the eye. "I'm coming back."


	2. Chapter 2

Arcade had convinced himself he was no longer angry with Mel for taking him on this probably-a-suicide-mission -- right up until he heard himself snap a couple hours in, "You know, most people don't stop to pick buffalo gourd seed on the way to the gates of Hell."

Mel's shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath before she stood up. "They're good against poison," she said, tone level in a way that suggested she was making an effort to keep it that way. "I don't know if Hell will allow your medical supplies in."

At that point, he had to admit his disposition could be described as _waspish_ at best. _This is probably why Julie keeps me on research._ And it really wasn't fair to Mel: he knew she was under a great deal of pressure from several directions, and this trip was likely to be far worse for her than for him. He, too, paused for a breath, then apologized and resolved to act more like the traveling companion he usually was.

So he kept talking, recounting funny slices of life he'd witnessed in his travels, but said very little of substance, as was his usual modus operandi. He couldn't stand silence; not knowing what the other person might be thinking about filled him with dread. But conversation was full of its own dangers: the more he said, the more he risked exposing dangerous information. And while that wasn't a worry anymore with Mel, the habit was too well ingrained -- jam any silence full of words, so long as they were only placeholders that obfuscated instead of revealing.

There was something he _needed_ to say, though, something that still bothered him, though, and when they stopped at the 188 for the night, he finally forced himself to voice it. "So, um, you wouldn't let Veronica go because she's a woman, or Raul because he's a ghoul, but I didn't exactly notice you worrying about the Legion's feelings about homosexuality."

"I did think about that, but here's why I'm bringing you anyway," she said with so little hesitation that he was inclined to believe her even before he heard her reasoning. "One, they can't tell that by looking at you. Two, you're a Follower, and I've always heard that Caesar still has just enough respect for them that they usually get left alone. Unless they go out of their way to make trouble, that is." She paused before adding, "Please don't," with a wry smile. "Three, you know Latin and most of them don't know that, so they'll speak pretty freely in front of you. That means you'd know if there's going to be trouble sooner than the others would. Most importantly, in our particular circumstances, that actually protects you from the one I'm most worried about, because he'll know you aren't interested in me sexually."

Arcade blinked. "Wait, how would he know I'm --?"

"I'm sure by now he's investigated all of my friends," she told him with a resigned air. "He's quite thorough. And, well, a few weeks ago at The Tops you weren't particularly discreet," she told him, the corner of her mouth pulling up a little.

He blushed to the tips of his ears at the -- admittedly hot -- memory. "In my defense, Swank is rather attractive, and by then I'd let Cass buy me two Atomic Cocktails."

"No defense necessary. Like I said, it works in our favor, and it was good to see you have some fun." 

They were quiet a few moments before he felt compelled to speak again. "Sorry I doubted you."

She waved a dismissive hand. "Neither of us have lived this long on blind trust. And I'm sorry, too, that we're even doing this at all. Mr. House is too used to giving orders, and I'm too used to taking them." She looked down, shame stealing over her posture, and he felt even worse about his earlier hostility.

"You're in a difficult position," he told her, hoping he was coming off as compassionate rather than patronizing.

It seemed he was, because she simply hummed agreement. For a moment he thought she was going to say more, but instead she glanced around at the other clusters of travelers settling in for the night and chose to do the same.

He meant to ask her about it the next morning once they'd gotten clear of the trading post, but instead they found themselves fending off two raiders who'd just killed a big gecko. It didn't surprise him afterward when Mel pulled a butcher's knife from her pack and went to the gecko carcass, but it did when she made a disgusted noise and immediately stood up.

"What's the matter?" he asked when she got close again.

She stowed the knife and started walking away a bit faster than usual, as though she'd been offended. "The raiders sprayed that gecko with so many bullets that not even the hide is usable."

"Well, we have plenty of provisions," he replied, even though his mouth was still watering at the now-dashed prospect of tender, juicy gecko steaks.

"Oh, I know, but they could have gotten a good meal out of that gecko -- two if they weren't too civilized to eat the liver and lungs, -- and then they'd have been too busy dressing it to bother us. It's just wasteful all the way around."

"Well, dressing it would probably have put us behind schedule anyway," he said, nibbling on a bit of spicy jerky to tide himself over until they stopped to eat in Novac.

She shook her head. "I'm planning to stop for the night just before Searchlight. I don't want anyone to think I'm in too much of a hurry to follow Caesar's orders, and I _really_ don't want to have to spend a night at the Fort if we can avoid it."

His stomach dropped; he hadn't even thought of what could happen if they were forced to stay there overnight. Suddenly it was easy to wait for their meal. Still, he was grateful for the easy pace -- his months of research had left him unaccustomed to this much walking at once.

When they reached Novac, he invited Daisy to join them for lunch at Mel's suggestion. Ranger Andy, however, intercepted him in the courtyard. "She's over at the scrapyard." He coughed nervously before adding, "And I don't think they were looking for more company." 

Arcade's ears grew hot again, but he thanked Andy and returned to Mel and assured her that although Daisy lived alone, she was apparently _not_ lonely.

"Good," Mel said and handed him a plate of Bighorner casserole. "Lonely is hard." He saw her eyes dart briefly in the direction of the motel, and he was willing to bet a sack of caps that she'd looked straight at Boone's door. But she had enough to deal with right now, so he pretended not to notice and tucked in.

A couple of hours after they left Novac, Mel turned to him and, out of nowhere, resumed the conversation she'd broken off last night. "About Mr. House -- I don't know what, exactly, we have to do with the Platinum Chip when we get there. But I think his ultimate goal is to keep the NCR and Legion fighting each other so the winner is much weaker when they settle the Dam and look back to Vegas." 

He had to agree; that sounded like the kind of thing House would do. Why dirty his hands -- his Securitrons' pincers, more like -- when he could play his foes off of one another? But Mel was still talking.

"As long as the Legion loses, I ... actually like this plan, except I don't want House in charge, either. And -- remember that odd Securitron in Benny's room? I'm starting to think his plans aren't such a bad idea. We'd need to talk to him again first, get more details, but if we really can free Vegas -- and the rest of the Mojave -- to rule itself, that's what I'd want." She took a breath and looked around a little nervously, as if saying that out loud would summon all three warring factions to obliterate her on the spot.

The speech blew him away, and not just because it was an absolute torrent of unsolicited words -- for Mel, anyway. It was one thing to know she didn't much care for any of the major players. It was another entirely to hear her actively planning to break their hold on the area. Arcade felt a wild fluttering in his chest that a younger version of him would have called hope, followed immediately by an almost physical urge to swat it down. _Let's see what she does after she gets what she wants from you._

"Well. That certainly aligns with my ideals," he finally replied, and then, too afraid he'd already fallen into some kind of trap, shifted back to the matter at hand. "So we can expect that whatever we do at the Fort will at least weaken the Legion's position?"

She nodded emphatically. "If I thought Mr. House wanted us to help them, I'd find us a home somewhere else. Maybe Goodsprings. They were kind to me after Benny shot me." It sounded like she'd actually considered the possibility -- poor Mel, only just getting a place to live and then almost immediately having to worry about losing it.

She didn't like it when he felt bad for her, though, so he made a joke instead. "What, you don't want to move to Black Mountain? Maybe take over the radio station?"

She laughed quietly and pretended to think it over. "You and Veronica would make good hosts, but please don't let her play 'Mad About the Boy'."

Arcade chuckled and said, "If she gives me a choice between that and 'Johnny Guitar', I make no promises."

They continued intermittently planning the playlist of this theoretical radio station until Mel pointed off the road. "Up this way." Twenty minutes later, they arrived at a surprisingly large -- and fairly intact -- house.

"Who lives here?" he said, looking around for inhabitants.

"Nobody now," Mel replied, plucking a few more prickly pear fruit off the plants nearby. "I think the NCR ran off the occupants when they took over Searchlight. There are still a couple of prospectors who use the mines to store things, but they don't use the house and don't mind if we do."

They went inside and chose beds from the several available, but sundown wouldn't come for a few more hours. So they ate dinner, after which Arcade cleaned his weapon and Mel made cactus water, sprinkling the crushed remains of the prickly pear on slices of cactus fruit. Mel kept her half on the rickety wooden table she sat beside, while Arcade balanced his tin plate on the arm of the sofa, another chair pulled out for him to prop up his feet.

Arcade opened his mouth to launch into another episode of True Freeside Stories to pass the time, but realized he'd been dominating their conversations all day, an easy enough faux pas to make since he liked to talk and she liked to listen -- at least, he hoped she did. "Okay, your turn to pick the discussion topic."

He'd caught her off-guard, -- _figures, who ever asks her to talk?_ \-- and she took a moment to come up with something. "Favorite Shakespeare character," she finally said.

Oh, good, nothing too personal, and something he had a ready answer for besides. "Feste from _Twelfth Night_."

She grinned. "I should've known it'd be one of the punners."

That was fair enough. He _had_ developed something of a reputation for that, to the point where even Boone recognized his _I'm setting up a pun_ tone of voice and started glaring preemptively. Some people just didn't appreciate the fine art of wordplay. "Well, yes, and he gets to speak truth to power without repercussions. I might be a little jealous."

Mel thought about that for a few moments, and when she spoke again her tone was more tentative than before. "No one takes him seriously, which lets him get away with knowing -- and saying -- more than he should. But that sets him apart, too, leaves him poking fun at a world he's not really part of, doesn't it?"

 _Ouch. And here I thought that was a safe one. But I guess the outsider who sees everything is a role she's familiar with, too._ He took a deep breath and then said with the forced brightness of a man who's revealed more than he meant to, "So! Who's your favorite?"

"Emilia from _Othello_ ," she replied immediately, and something clicked into place in Arcade's mind. Even though Mel had a Pip-Boy, she used it only for maps and the radio, preferring to write things down on paper. Her ever-present notebook had a quotation from that play written on the inside of the front cover, and now he could place it: _I will not charm my tongue; I am bound to speak_ was one of Emilia's lines. "Kind of self-explanatory," she added after a moment.

"Heh," he replied, considering it. _Good woman married to horrible man. The only one he underestimates. The one who undoes him._ Arcade could see the appeal for Mel, though he found himself trying very hard not to think about Emilia's fate in the play, or about the last flower message Mel had sent Vulpes.

She spotted his worry anyway. "Whatever happens at the Fort, I'll make sure you get out okay. They're not getting any more people I care about." Her voice remained low but trenchant; he believed her utterly even as he feared what she might be willing to trade for his safety.

The next half-hour or so passed in silence before he dared raise the obvious next question. "So what should I expect to see tomorrow?"

"It's sure to be ugly, but I spent all my time in the capital, not in war camps, so I don't know exactly what will be going on. I never heard anything good about the camps, though. It's only public slaves who end up at those, and they aren't treated as well as the ones who have an owner." There was survivor's guilt written all over her, but again, he didn't know what to say.

So he pressed on. "Is there anything non-obvious that I need to avoid doing?"

Mel stared at her plate for a moment before replying, "Make sure you look people in the eyes when you meet them, even if you don't speak to them. Some of them you won't want to look in the eyes, but do it anyway. Looking down or away is what slaves are trained to do. Don't remind them of slaves."

He could only gulp. "Got it."

"If it makes you feel any better, I'll have things to remember, too. Mainly the looking people in the eyes thing and also remembering that I'm not supposed to understand Latin, let alone speak it. If I slip up, I can't exactly claim to be an educated person like you can."

He wanted to argue the point, tell her _anyone can be educated_ , but knew exactly what Mel meant. Even though her accent wasn't very thick, he'd seen too many people -- even a few Followers, to his shame -- talk to her as though she were a small child the moment they heard her speak.

After a few more moments, she added, " _He'll_ probably come to meet us," the dark note in her voice leaving no doubt whom she meant.

"Why don't you use his name?" he asked, hoping he could suggest to her that leaving it unspoken gave the man power over her that he didn't deserve.

"The only time I was allowed to speak it was to tell someone else who owned me. He had me address him as 'husband'. And after I left ... my people believed that when you say something's name, it comes for you. I don't even like to think it. I guess it's silly now, since we're heading right for him. And you read my mail, so you know it anyway." She was clearly trying to make a joke, but it fell flat. Mel hissed a sigh -- the first crack he'd seen in her calm facade -- and grabbed their empty plates. "Let's go to bed."

He didn't sleep well, and judging by the pacing he heard a few of the times he woke up, neither did she. But they left at dawn all the same.

Not long after, they stopped at the top of the hill, staring down at their destination. He could tell even at this distance that terrible scenes awaited: crosses lined the approach to the cove. "Ready?" Mel asked him.

He wasn't, but if she could face the Legion this bravely, he could at least pretend to. "Ready. You have the Mark of Caesar ready to show them so we don't get shot on sight ... or hung up as decoration?"

She pushed back her sleeve, revealing the Mark dangling from its thrice-looped cord like a charm from a bracelet.

"Good idea -- you can just hold up your hand and they'll see it."

"Well, that and I'd rather not be reminded of the last necklace the Legion gave me." She took a deep breath and started walking again.

He swallowed hard and followed her.

As they neared the first of the crosses, he saw one of the Legionaries striding uphill to meet them. Beside him, Mel stiffened and muttered, "Figures."

He didn't understand her disgust -- of course they'd be assigned a handler -- until the figure drew close, inclined his head slightly, and said, "Courier. You have been eagerly awaited," with a gleam in his eye and an emphasis on _eagerly_ that left Arcade with no doubt: this was Mel's "husband".

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was talky as fuck, so thank you for making it to the end!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated tags: referenced rape, misogyny

Everything had stopped feeling real the moment her husband called her _Courier_. Of course he wouldn't use her real name, the one she'd given herself. Still, an occupational title was a damn sight better than _woman_ , or worse still, _Corva_.

"Caesar will be pleased that you finally decided to join us," he continued, extending a hand toward the cove to encourage her forward. It reminded her of the gallantry he'd affected at White Tank when he was playing the doting husband, making this whole scene even stranger -- so much so that it became easier to act like her current self instead of the terrified slave girl of the past.

That let her reply, " _Visit_ would be a more accurate description," tone mild -- she still didn't want to provoke him unnecessarily -- but firm. "I'm only here to find out what he has to say."

"You are now. But once you have met him, you will be convinced." He set a hand on her elbow as if to guide her; she quickly shrugged it off, disguising the gesture as an adjustment to her pack. He'd probably find some way to punish her for that later, but for now their points were made. She started her descent.

When her husband took two quick strides to put himself in the lead again, Mel risked a glance at Arcade. The questioning look he gave her in return was tinged with enough sadness that she knew what he was asking: _Is this him?_

She stared straight into Arcade's eyes, hoping he'd pick up on the reminder to keep his eyes up, and gave him a quick, curt nod. His lips thinned for a moment, and then she saw his mask resettle, a rather straighter-backed version of the dour but unremarkable Followers doctor he showed the rest of the world. _Good. Hold onto it, Arcade._

When she caught sight of a diamond-wire fence behind some tents, Mel had to clench her fists on the straps of her pack to maintain her own facade. That had to be the captures' pen, and she knew those from the inside. She wasn't sure how she would react when faced with people in their first days with the Legion, her past their terrifying present. It seemed she wouldn't have to find out, though: this one currently stood empty.

Her husband followed her gaze and said pleasantly, "I'm told you profligates are upset by the necessities of training slaves, so I had the pen cleared as a gesture of goodwill."

"How did you have it 'cleared'?" asked Arcade with a steel in his voice that impressed her. _He's right to be suspicious; I just hope he's not sorry he asked._

"They're working in there." He pointed to a rickety shack near the cliff. She couldn't see any movement nearby, but direct answers from him were usually true statements, so she loosened her grip on the straps of her pack. She scolded herself for feeling relieved; it would have been better to know how many were here and if they would need medical help when they came back to free them.

That reminded Mel to keep looking around as they picked their way down the broken road, noting the landscape's features and where the camp's guards were posted. She wasn't much of a tactician herself, but Craig and Veronica could put the information to good use later. She must have taken too long sizing up the centurion standing on a building overlooking the camp, because her husband leaned in and made a show of gesturing toward the water. "Look away. Aurelius of Phoenix is easily provoked and already unhappy you are here."

"I don't suppose anyone's really happy I'm here," she replied, turning her gaze to a rickety wooden pier where another Legionary waited on a raft. She resisted the temptation to test the dock's strength with one foot first and moved steadily forward.

"Caesar will be." He added in a murmur, " _I_ am," before clearing his throat and continuing at his previous volume. "Cursor Lucullus will be conveying us across the river."

"Ave," said the ferryman. "Are you ready to head upriver?"

Her husband stepped aboard the raft and then offered her his hand in that same ridiculous show of exaggerated chivalry. She smiled, held up her hand as if to say _no thanks_ , and boarded unassisted. Arcade joined them, they sat, and the cursor pushed off.

"What can I expect when we arrive?" Mel asked after a few moments, partly to maintain the illusion that she knew nothing of the Legion, and partly out of genuine curiosity. She'd only seen Caesar on coins before.

To her surprise, it was Lucullus who answered. "You'll be meeting face-to-face with the mighty Caesar himself, founder of the Legion, conqueror of 86 tribes. Beyond that --" he spread his hands. "To my knowledge, this is the first time Caesar has ever summoned one of the Dissolute to see him. That it'd be a woman is even more surprising."

Arcade looked like he wanted to challenge that comment, but Mel shot him a sharp look. _I don't want to spend the next few hours listening to this argument._

Apparently her husband didn't, either, and cut in, "She is unique among women. Even if she weren't, Lucullus, it can be useful to say so anyway. Profligate women like to think they are special."

"You know how women think? Are you married, Inculta?" asked the cursor. _Oh, hell._

"I had a wife some years ago."

"Why'd you kill her?" _I see his reputation precedes him._

Of course he laughed. "She ran. I found her. Her grave's ... a ways west of Flagstaff." His smirk grew even wider.

The breath that escaped her at that was somewhere between a sigh -- he was still terribly good at lying with the truth -- and, unacceptably, a laugh. Even if his choice of words told her that he was also still irked that she'd fooled him in Nipton, Mel knew she needed to watch her responses more closely, more like she had before she was shot.

"Ah, one of those." Lucullus clicked his tongue in mock sympathy. "You must have liked her, though, if you went to the trouble of burying her."

He replied in Latin, likely to give the impression that his words were for the ferryman's ears alone, which, of course, they weren't. "I do miss her. She was an excellent cook and used her mouth for far better things than complaining." _So this is how the bastard's going to punish me for earlier._ Even though her face grew hot with humiliation, she kept it carefully blank and hoped her skin tone hid the flush. At least now she knew what to offer first if she ended up having to barter for Arcade's safety.

Lucullus grinned and replied, also in Latin, "Good on her knees, then?"

"Good in any position I had her. But on her knees she was exquisite." He actually sighed wistfully, and Mel wished a lakelurk would emerge and drag him under. It would be such a tidy solution. Well, tidy for her. Lakelurks were messy eaters.

Thinking about that helped her maintain her composure. She sat unmoving, staring out across the water, and did her best to ignore their conversation, which at last drifted away from her specifically and more toward the utility of wives in general. Beside her Arcade was fiddling uncomfortably with the hem of his lab coat, and she felt a dual rush of shame and regret that he had to hear this, too. She'd find a way to do something nice for him later.

"Ah, Courier." At last her husband returned to English and she could stop feigning incomprehension. "You were so quiet I almost forgot you were there. Good. Silence will serve you well on our side of the river."

 _Yeah, yeah, Legion Brahminshit,_ she imagined Cass commenting, and almost let slip a smile. "Any other advice?"

"Whatever Caesar asks of you, do it well and without question." That phrasing suggested either the mission he had for her was so secret that Lucullus couldn't know about it, or so very secret that even her husband didn't know. She couldn't resist trying to find out which.

"I wasn't asking you to divulge the information Caesar's trusted you with." That got a little downward twitch at the mouth; so he didn't know what it was -- interesting. "More along the lines of protocol."

"You'll surrender your weapons, chems, and alcohol at the gate, and your ... chaperone can only accompany you as far as Caesar's tent, where he must wait outside. This audience was granted only to you."

Arcade made a little disappointed noise that Mel knew was sarcastic. As much as she sympathized with his desire to avoid Caesar, she genuinely disliked the idea of being separated from her friend -- it sounded like a prime opportunity for a hostage situation to start. _Good to have a little warning._

When they reached the far bank of the Colorado, Arcade indeed had to empty half of his medical bag, keeping only his tools; he shot Mel a wry glance that clearly said, _Well, you were right._ She acknowledged it by dividing her healing powder and buffalo gourd seed between them.

"Do we need to search them to be sure we got everything?" asked one of the guards with barely concealed eagerness, eyes lingering a little too long on Arcade. _Ah._ If he liked men, searching them thoroughly was probably the closest to satisfaction he could get in a place like this, but that didn't mean she had to let him treat her friend that way. Mel took a step closer to that guard and hoped her husband's jealousy would do the rest.

It did; to her great relief, he replied coldly, "That won't be necessary," and ushered them onward, past more crosses. As she had on the approach to the cove, Mel made eye contact with the crucified prisoners as she passed, knowing that acknowledging their suffering -- their very existence -- was the only thing she could do for them now. She was glad Craig wasn't here to see this; she knew Nelson had been hard on him even though they'd been able to free those soldiers before they were too far gone. But still she missed him, and not only because if he were here they could fight.

She was upbraiding herself for letting her mind wander to him _again_ when a small group of boys, _oh, God, in little Legionary uniforms,_ darted across their path. One stopped to stare at Mel before shouting to the others, "Look! Look! It's a real profligate whore," pointing at her as if he'd spotted a rare bird. How old was he? Seven? Ten? If her little Leo had lived, he'd have been nine -- would have been running alongside them, believing the same things, shouting the same epithets.

Mel shut her eyes against the sudden threat of tears and clenched her jaw tight, but she kept walking. A few steps later she muttered to Arcade, "I'm Dissolute, not profligate, damn it," earning a startled half-laugh.

It wasn't much farther to Caesar's tent after that, but it felt like it. Here there were slaves going about their duties, and while Mel was prepared for that sight, Arcade was clearly struggling to keep his composure as they staggered under the weight of bundles that it was hard to believe they could carry at all. _He talks about being bad with people, but he's a kinder man than he lets on._ All she could do was nudge him and look upward as a reminder to keep his head up.

Her husband entered the tent first, giving Mel a chance to tell Arcade, "Make a lot of noise if they try to take you anywhere. I _will_ find you."

He mostly suppressed a shudder and nodded before her husband reappeared at the tent flap and beckoned her inside, past two Praetorian guards with larger, healthier, and better-kept dogs than the ones she'd fought at Nipton. There were three more Praetorians beside and behind Caesar's throne, and to her relief, she didn't recognize any of them. Her husband occasionally entertained Praetorians in Flagstaff, and though she doubted they would have paid any attention to the slave serving their food, an ill-timed flash of memory here would be disastrous for her.

Finally she turned her attention to the throne's occupant, the man who had taken a little tribal boy and turned him into the monster she knew as her husband, the man who had brought slavery, rape, and death to thousands more. Mel half-expected him to have glowing red eyes or some other outward sign of all the evil he'd wrought on the world.

But even with his fancy regalia, Caesar only looked like the clerk at the Mojave Express office in The Hub, right down to the impatient set of his mouth. She inclined her head politely all the same, just as she would to an NCR dignitary, and hoped it was enough of a show of respect not to offend him. Nothing good could come from starting out servile.

At first she was sure she had angered him, because he began, "You're the courier who's caused so much trouble for my Legion, and yet you dare come before me." He delivered a fortunately-incomplete list of her crimes against them, and then stared at her expectantly.

"Yes, I remember," she said calmly. No remorse, but no provocation, either.

"What were you thinking?" His tone was affable, as if he was questioning a poor chess move rather than threatening her.

In her mind, she could almost hear Cass retorting, _I was thinking you're a total asshole_ , but Mel chose a more diplomatic approach, holding up her hand to display his Mark. "You guaranteed my safety." 

He snorted. "And you fell for that? Really? Because I'm going to have you killed now."

No, he wasn't. He still wanted something from her besides her blood. She raised an eyebrow in a silent _Oh?_ and waited for him to admit he was lying.

A few moments later, he said expansively, "Relax. I'm fucking with you," and punctuated it with a genial laugh at his own "joke".

 _Just tell me what you want already_ was what she wanted to say, but Mel settled for replying, "And is that why you summoned me?"

Her husband didn't even flinch, but something in the air to her left changed -- why? Oh. Oh, God, he'd taken it literally. Mel herself knew it was unlikely -- she was no great beauty -- but apparently it hadn't occurred to him that Caesar might want her for himself.

Caesar looked her up and down, clearly considering it, and then burst out laughing, breaking her husband's tension. "Not unless you grow some tits. Don't flatter yourself, girl."

Mel again said nothing and waited for him to get to business. Instead he lectured her at some length about his personal philosophy in a way that reminded her of so many men over the years who'd assumed the woman on the next bar stool existed only to hear their wise proclamations. It was surprisingly coherent and lofty-sounding, as if some rhetorical flourish could wash away the blood and misery he'd created with these ideas.

When he joked about making the "torch of knowledge" literal and opined that he'd done "his" 86 tribes a favor by enslaving and brutalizing them, Mel struggled to keep her disgust off her face. She had to rely on a combination of telling herself _I've listened to terrible things before and kept a still face_ and her mental-Cass shouting extremely profane demands to shut up.

Still, Caesar wasn't _wrong_ about the NCR's greed and corruption, and to gain his trust she let him see that she felt that way. _Sorry, Craig, but it's true._

Finally, _finally_ , he got to the point, and to her astonishment, he ordered her to go to the same weather monitoring station Mr. House had. "If House built it, I want it destroyed." At least now she didn't have to create any pretext to get in there in the first place.

"May my companion outside accompany me?" she asked politely.

"Yes. But none of my Legionaries." He had a pretentious explanation for that, too, that boiled down to his need to keep them ignorant of any other way to live but the Legion's in order to maintain his control. _So you know this 'dialectics' business wouldn't convince most of them, either._

He restated her orders to "destroy whatever gizmo-happy Brahmin shit you find," delivered the expected string of threats should she attempt disobedience, and at long last bid her _vale_. She inclined her head once more and, fighting down old training, turned and walked away to check on Arcade.


	4. Chapter 4

_Dear Diary_ , thought Arcade sourly as he wished for some shade, _today I took a boat ride with slavers and mass murderers and had to listen to one of them fondly reminisce about all the times he raped my friend and I couldn't even push him off the boat because I wasn't supposed to understand what he was saying. Everything here is horrible and I can't do anything about it._

 _Neither could Mel, and this was her_ life _for four years,_ he pointed out to himself, bringing his pity party to an abrupt end. He had no idea how she was staying so calm through all of this, especially now that Caesar was in there abusing the works of Hegel to justify his fascism to one of its victims -- with little jokes thrown in. Jokes! Because slaughtering your way across the land was a laughing matter! Arcade wasn't even _in_ the tent and he could feel a rant boiling up inside him.

The events outside the tent weren't helping him hold onto his temper, either. His post provided him an excellent view of the slaves cresting the hill, straining and sweating under the pressure of not just the enormous packs they carried, but also the Mojave sun and, worst of all, their masters. As if to prove his point, a Legionary sauntered over and hit one of them for no discernible reason. Of course she lost her balance, and she and her heavy burden toppled over. She lay on the ground unmoving until he barked, "Don't just lie there, you lazy bitch," and kicked her. With a muffled sob she struggled to her feet and shuffled away, dragging her fallen bundle behind her.

Ten minutes later, another slave crossed paths with another Legionary with nothing better to do. This time he tripped her, but she avoided falling facefirst, merely dropping to one knee before righting herself with impressive speed. Arcade was relieved she'd managed the "proper" response to this abuse for an entire second before this Legionary snarled, "I put you down, slave, so _stay_ down." Then he hit her hard at the temple with the hilt of his machete. She crumpled to the ground, and Arcade started forward before the guard beside him ordered him not to move, causing an internal war between his duty as a physician and his sense of self-preservation. Fortunately, once the Legionary was out of sight, she rose again, shouldered her bundle, and continued onward.

 _Ah. There is no proper response. The Legionaries just want to hurt them and it doesn't matter what they do._ Arcade's work in Freeside gave him ample opportunities to see the handiwork of men who hate women, but he'd never stopped to think about what a society that _rewarded_ that hatred would look like. He couldn't wait to leave this place and only come back once. With all of their friends. Especially Boone. 

By the time Mel exited the tent, still unnaturally composed, he couldn't hold his fury in any longer. "What a --"

"-- an educational conversation," she cut him off firmly. "I know. I didn't realize the Legion was based on Old World philosophers as well as Old World history."

 _What -- oh._ Her bastard "husband" had followed her out of the tent and now stood at her elbow, damn near purring with approval. Arcade couldn't help thinking how good the man's head would look on a stick.

But Mel only turned to him, tone still perfectly polite. "The bunker?"

"This way, Courier," he said, his gesture in that direction a thinly-disguised excuse to run his fingertips along her arm. She didn't shudder, though, until he turned away.

Vulpes led them a short distance to a building marked _Weather Monitoring Station_ , past a training yard full of what Arcade would have considered glorious eye-candy if not for his conscience. When they reached the door, Mel said, "We'd prefer not to explore this place unarmed."

"Naturally." Vulpes put his hand on Mel's elbow again, guiding her inside. "I'll have your weapons brought to you," he said, waving Arcade in as well before heading off toward the gate.

In the wait that followed, Arcade had entirely too much time to worry whether Mel only wanted her weapons for the bunker. There was a distinct possibility that once she was armed, she'd finally snap, and then they'd have to fight their way out.

It wasn't a wise choice, and Mel _was_ usually level-headed, but sometimes she did things that by turns puzzled and terrified Arcade. That whole mess with the Powder Gangers, for one. He'd expected their puerile prison-rape taunts to anger her that day at the Whittaker Farmstead, and it certainly made sense now that he knew far more details of her history than he ever wanted to. But depopulating the NCR prison miles away from the original offense seemed so unnecessary, and her matter-of-fact _had to be done_ as she surveyed the dozens of bodies afterward still haunted him.

The guards interrupted his train of thought with some small talk: "Noticed you quit buying fancy knives. Saving up for something?"

"Yeah, but I gotta sell my cook first. The pretty ones aren't cheap."

 _Ugh. Those are human beings, not commodities._ And then Arcade remembered exactly what had been said at the Whittaker Farmstead: _We bought and sold guys like you like property back in the prison._ He no longer wondered why Mel had reacted the way she did. Under that quiet, impassive exterior, he was sure her very pulse beat out _never again never again never again_.

It was understandable, noble even -- but it didn't really make him feel much better about their odds of getting out of this place alive. Thankfully, when Vulpes returned with two young Legionaries, each carrying one of their packs, Mel simply thanked him coolly and took out the Platinum Chip, leaving her machete sheathed.

"In here, I guess?" she asked, pointing to a slot on the Lucky-38-emblazoned console in the near corner.

One of the guards shrugged, so she pressed in the chip. The console's humming became whirring, and a hatch opened in the floor, exposing the staircase that led to the doors Caesar had mentioned. Mel repocketed the chip and descended warily, Arcade several steps behind with his plasma pistol drawn.

The doors parted for her automatically -- it was an elevator. She paused a moment, hand on the door frame, before Arcade realized she must be waiting for him and caught up.

When they left the elevator who-knew-how-far below and its doors shut again behind them, Mel let out a heavy breath and Arcade braced for her to vent the rage he knew had to be swirling inside her. But instead there was only silence. At least that he could break. "How are you?"

She seemed to consider it for a moment before replying, "A little disappointed, if you can believe that. I don't really know what I expected, but it was something more than a self-important, irritable old man playing dress-up. I almost pitied him until he got to the part about enslavement being a gift to the tribes."

That ... was not the answer he'd expected. "I did admire your restraint at that point."

She shrugged. "Less my willpower and more the number of large power fists in that tent. But how are _you_?" All of that and she wanted to know how he was? Was she trying for sainthood?

"A little shaky." He hesitated. The _I'm afraid you're going to lose your mind and try to fight the Legion two-against-hundreds_ part he suspected would not go over so well, but he could at least tell her some of the truth. "I ... saw some things out there."

"I'm sure you did." Mel looked away, over his shoulder into the middle distance. "It really is worse than Flagstaff. I'm sorry. For that and for ... on the boat." She met his gaze again. "You shouldn't have had to hear that."

"You are the last person in the world who should be apologizing for anything that bastard did." He probably should have stopped there, but his next words were out of his mouth before he even realized he'd thought them again. "I don't know how you lived like that."

Something intense flashed across her face, but she smoothed it over before he could parse it. "Painfully. Now let's get moving."

She stepped quickly through the set of doors in front of them, and then someone else spoke, startling Arcade. "I see you reached your destination safely. Shall we get to work?" He turned toward this new voice and found himself openly staring at the monitor bank. So this was Mr. House, or at least as much of him as anyone had seen in centuries. He was shrewd, sophisticated, and a bit severe, but his lips weren't moving as he spoke; the image was just an old photograph. He couldn't still look like that -- could he?

Mel roused Arcade from his gawking by replying, "Of course," delivered with a polite deference that made his stomach lurch. He was sure he knew where she'd learned to sound like that.

Their mission, which House explained as though Mel were a child, was to take the Platinum Chip to a terminal across this bunker and upload its data. It sounded easy enough until House added, "I can't control any of the facility's systems," which turned out to mean they'd be fighting its robotic guardians if they couldn't deactivate them from the security room somewhere nearby.

"I'll do that," Mel told him, and the screen went blank.

"Wow," Arcade said after a moment. "Is he always that ... peremptory?"

"I've seen worse," she reminded him with a wry smile.

"Well, yes, but he still didn't have to be so condescending."

Mel shrugged. "He doesn't think tribals are very smart. And, well, when it comes to things like this --" she gestured to a terminal by the door -- "I'm not. Would you mind ...?"

"No problem." Arcade stepped forward, pulled down the keyboard, and quickly tapped through a few text files. "Okay, the good news is that the Sentrybots are on standby right now. The bad news is that the turrets and Protectrons are active. And -- says there was a radiation leak here a couple years ago; are we taking rads right now?"

Mel stopped inspecting the fire ax she used for fighting robots and consulted her Pip-Boy. "Yes, but not many. Needle's barely moving. So next we find the security room and see if we can shut anything else down?" She then looked over her left shoulder, mouth half-open, before shutting it and pressing forward. What was -- oh. She was about to check in with Boone. Well, he _was_ usually with them. Again, he let the moment pass unremarked.

Before he could suggest that he and the range of his plasma pistol lead the way, Mel was down the stairs and smashing in the first Protectron guard's headlamp. Looked like this was how she was going to vent her anger. Arcade just hoped she wasn't going to get hurt. He still didn't have most of his supplies, and he didn't want her to become any more vulnerable to the predators above them.

Fortunately, they found the security room and its control terminals right at the foot of the stairs. Arcade was only able to unlock one of them, but at least it was the one controlling the turrets. They could handle Protectrons far more easily.

Mel did take his advice about letting him shoot said Protectrons from a distance, and they advanced through the facility easily, plasma bursts and falling robots the only breaks in the quiet. Eventually she tapped his wrist to get his attention and pointed out a console with a slot like the one on the surface. This one, though, was marked "Securitron Operations." After a moment's hesitation that could either have been reluctance to give House more power or simple uncertainty if she had the right machine, Mel pressed in the Platinum Chip.

The entire structure shuddered its response with a rhythmic series of clanks, thumps, and pneumatic hisses. Arcade grabbed a deactivated turret to steady himself and found himself facing out a window like those in one of the rooms they'd passed before. This one, too, overlooked a darkened storage room with shadowy rows of Securitrons. Now, however, lights kicked on below, revealing that the robots' ranks went on for an astonishing distance. Forget the Legion, or even the NCR: House might be able to take over the _continent_ with this much firepower.

Mel peered down, too, her dark eyes widening considerably. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before she finally got words out. "I -- I ... holy _shit_."

It was a pretty accurate summary, if not a particularly graceful one. "I guess that's why House doesn't care what anyone thinks of him. With all of these, who needs people?"

"Well, he did up until now, since we're here," she pointed out. "I'm just not sure for how much longer." She didn't say anything else, only collected the Platinum Chip and began retracing their steps, but her continued caution told Arcade she wasn't sure the Sentrybots would still be on standby when they neared the elevator.

To his immense relief, they were, and House was back on the monitor to congratulate them. "Your work here is done. Return to the Lucky 38 so we can discuss next steps." He added a bit about them having a bright future ahead, and Arcade uneasily wondered what, exactly, that looked like to House. 

When the screen went dark again, he turned to Mel, who was leaning against the wall beside the elevator, seeming reluctant to return to the surface. He didn't blame her, but put an optimistic note into his voice anyway. "All done here. So now we go up, tell Caesar everything's fine, and then get out of this horrible place."

Mel's expression remained grave. "That's the idea, but there's another problem first. _He'll_ surely be there when I report back ... and he can tell when I'm lying."


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing reeeally explicit happens here, but that "Vulpes Inculta is a gross person" tag is deserved, both for a brief homophobic remark and a reference to the events of The Reunion at the end.

Returning most of her possessions to a Legionary guard would ordinarily not help Mel relax, but now they were out of the bunker -- out of the damned _elevator_ \-- and she could see the sky again. Her heart rate went down and she started to feel a little better about their chances of surviving her second audience with Caesar. She could convince him the place was in its death throes with an account of all the noise and the way the whole structure had lurched underfoot, and her husband would have no lie to detect.

If they questioned her further, she could fall back on Caesar's expectation of her ignorance and play a wide-eyed tribal girl who was just confused about everything that had happened underground. Which was technically true -- she still didn't quite understand how the chip could make all those robots do that at once. And _technically true_ had gotten something past _him_ once already. She could do this.

She _had_ to do this.

When Mel approached the tent guard, his expression seemed tighter and grimmer than before. He escorted her inside, where to her surprise, Caesar's throne stood vacant, the flanking Praetorians gone. He pointed at a table and chairs off to the left and said, "Wait here until my lord commands your report."

She'd rather have waited outside with Arcade, but at least there were books stacked on the table. She was surprised that the first one she opened was written in English, especially when it turned out to be a painstakingly handwritten record of the tribes the Legion had consumed: part chronicle, part slave ledger, all a catalog of cruelty. But Mel found herself wondering why it wasn't in Latin.

She shook her head, both impressed by and horrified at her detachment -- she was staring down an archive of the Legion's crimes that undoubtedly included everyone she'd known growing up, and her first thought was for the language they'd written it in? But thinking about the book's contents wouldn't help her here, so she shut it, pushed it to the far end of the table, and tried to distract herself from it with the next one. Unfortunately, the other books in the stack were copies of the first, three of them with a slip of paper inside: _Goodsprings_ , said one, then _Primm_ and _Novac_. Now she understood. These English editions were propaganda, intended to frighten the larger independent towns into submission. Apparently someone here realized that the Legion would go hungry if they unleashed her husband and Lanius on the entire Mojave.

She reassembled the stack, wishing she could banish it from her mind altogether, but after a moment it occurred to Mel that this might be all that was left to say that some of these people had ever existed. Then she knew what she had to do. She glanced around the eerily quiet tent and, satisfied no one was watching, slid one of the non-marked books into her Mojave Express bag underneath her few Legion-approved belongings. These people deserved to be remembered.

Murmurs arose behind the drape separating what she assumed was Caesar's private quarters from the rest of this tent. And one of the voices was her husband's. Mel couldn't make out what was being said, but the tone of the discussion was quickly growing heated. She fidgeted nervously, shoving her all-too-clear memories of that same impatient hiss straight into the cupboard in her head.

And then, Caesar's voice, probably loud enough for Arcade to hear: "Settle down. I'm fucking awake." 

Oh. She'd returned in the middle of the mighty conqueror's nap, and they must have been arguing about whether to wake him. Suddenly her anxiety seemed ridiculous. It was a good thing she'd relaxed, however, because now one of the Praetorians was awkwardly hauling the drape aside.

Before anyone entered the room, the man who'd been arguing with her husband spoke up, though his tone was now far more deferential. "My lord, would you like to take some more time before --"

"I'm not a goddamned infant, Lucius. I'm fine now, and I've got shit to do." So he hadn't been fine earlier? _Hmm._ She didn't have time to consider that further, though, because he swept into the room and assumed his throne, smoothing down his silly costume as he did so.

To Mel's immense relief, he wasted no time on small talk. "I felt the ground shake a while ago. I'll take that as a sign you got the job done."

She nodded, quick and businesslike, and prayed that it had always been something in her voice that gave her lies away.

God, as usual, wasn't listening; her husband spoke up. "My lord, it would perhaps be prudent to verify that." _Fuck, he suspects._

Before she could say anything more, Caesar turned to him and said, "And how, exactly, would we do that? The doors down there are sealed again, and now they won't open up even with the chip. Besides, look at her, Vulpes. She's the best kind of tribal: just smart enough to follow orders, but not smart enough to think up ways to disobey. She did as she was told."

Her husband began to object -- funny, his argument now depended on convincing Caesar of her intelligence -- but Caesar gave him a sharp look and said, "You question the Son of Mars?"

"Never, my lord," he replied immediately and looked away. How eerie to hear her husband speak to Caesar the same way she'd been trained to speak to him. She knew in the abstract that he didn't sit at the top of the Legion's hierarchy, of course, but in Flagstaff, she encountered only his authority, cruel and absolute.

Now, however? He was still subject to this intransigent social order, and she -- she not only stood outside it, but Caesar, the man who could shut up her husband, was asking for _her_ help. She held real power here.

"Let's press on, shall we? I want Mr. House out of the picture, and you're going to make that happen. Kill him. You have an interest in his death, too. If he knows that you destroyed his ... gadgets beneath the Fort, he will strike back. And you know where to find him. How he dies, I leave up to you."

Mel didn't hesitate before agreeing. She'd given this some thought before, since she suspected House would die before voluntarily emancipating New Vegas, and added, "You should know that it may take me some time to get around his robot guards. They're very powerful." There, now he wouldn't expect her back anytime soon.

"Don't take too long. Vale." Caesar flicked his hand in a shooing gesture; she nodded and turned to leave, for once paying little mind to her husband's gaze on her back. She still feared him -- to do otherwise would be suicidally reckless, -- but she no longer felt the need to cower before him.

The absence of that weight left her feeling a little lightheaded when she pushed back the tent flap and made her way back into the sunlight. "Think we're done here," she told Arcade, and at the moment leaving seemed like a trivial thing, the metal walls circling the place looking far more battered and flimsy than when they first arrived. 

It reminded her of how oddly simple walking out of Flagstaff had been seven years ago, the unaccustomed bulk of Gurges' heavy armor her greatest difficulty. The Legion's real walls, she now knew, were built out of hopelessness.

And yet, then and now, Mel kept walking.

They were halfway back to the gate where they'd originally surrendered their weapons when her husband caught up with them. "Lucullus won't return for another three hours."

"There's only one ferryman for all these people?" Arcade put in with a dubiousness Mel shared.

"Only one that I trust with passengers of your importance," he replied, the gaze he cast over her leaving no doubt that his concern was not Lucullus's skills as a waterman. "I won't be accompanying you back across."

Well, that would make things a bit less terrible. "I'm sure we can find a way to pass the time until then." 

"Why don't you chat with the healers?" suggested her husband in his most poisonously pleasant voice. "You must be missing the company of women. I'm sure Dr. Gannon doesn't quite count."

To his immense credit, Arcade didn't reply, only met her husband's smug gaze, rolled his eyes, and headed back uphill.

Mel followed, wrestling down a rush of anger -- and fear; nothing good ever happened to other slaves when she was around. He was likely just trying to put her back in what he considered her place, she told herself. As terrible as her husband was, he wasn't fool enough to alienate her when Caesar still needed her services.

She felt a bit better when she saw that the healers were currently grinding down xander root for healing powder, a fairly mindless task that talking wouldn't impede, and that they had seen her husband coming. If he'd startled them, they might have dropped precious ingredients, and that way lay a beating.

When her husband said, "You," and pointed to one of them, a gaunt dark-skinned woman with close-cropped hair, Mel could see she thought one was coming anyway. "You're the one who speaks English, yes?"

"I am, my lord," she replied with a calm born from exhaustion. "How may I serve?"

"Show our visitor and her friend how skilled you are." Ah, yes, the additional cruelties of putting her under pressure _and_ making a point of Mel's freedom to someone who had none.

Indeed, the healer's eyes were wide when they met Mel's. "A free woman," she murmured, low and amazed, before her training reasserted itself and she looked down. "I forget myself -- are you injured?"

Mel swallowed her guilt and assured her, "No, no, we're all right. I'm Mel, and this is Arcade. We know there are rules about what medicines you can use. Would you mind telling us how you do things?"

She relaxed visibly at that point, introduced herself as Siri, and began taking them through the healers' toolkit. It was, of course, limited to natural remedies like the ones Mel had grown up with, but Siri deployed them in ways that suggested she had the kind of training that around here would be called _profligate_. Arcade looked particularly impressed with her wound-cleaning techniques.

"That's a really good method to use with what you have," he told her. "You really know your stuff."

Siri smiled sadly. "Thank you. I was studying to be a doctor ... before."

 _Before_ was an extremely dangerous word where slaves were concerned, and though her husband had wandered a short distance away, drinking a bottle of water and absolutely radiating boredom, Mel did not want to get Siri in trouble. She needed to change the subject quickly before Arcade asked something the healer might feel obligated to answer.

The mortar and pestle in her hands provided a topic. "How much xander root do you go through here?"

"It's one of the main ingredients of healing powder, so about twice as much as we do broc flowers. You can see a day's worth of those in that bag over there. It's a pity; the flowers are much easier to find."

That stunned Mel. In all her talks and travels, she had never -- _never_ \-- heard of using two xander roots to one broc flower. The preparation certainly varied from tribe to tribe, but everyone agreed on the proportions. Too much xander root and you'd still heal up, but the wound would sting like -- _oh_. They were doing this on purpose. Mel was willing to bet there was a secret cache of properly made powder somewhere for tending the slaves' injuries. Good for Siri.

The three of them talked a bit more about the various uses of local flora, Arcade jotting down notes here and there, before her husband cleared his throat loudly.

"I think he means we should be letting you work in peace," Mel said wryly. _I don't think this turned out the way he was hoping it would._

Siri's answering smile actually reached her eyes. "Probably, but I appreciate the conversation. How much longer will you be here?"

"Only about two and a half hours." Mel surprised herself with how fast she replied. Somewhere in the back of her mind she must be counting the minutes.

She nodded, expression a mix of disappointment and relief. "Just please don't go anywhere alone before then. I overheard some of the men talking about 'trying you out' when you went in to see Lord Caesar."

Her husband was at her elbow immediately, for once withering someone else with the intensity of his full attention. "Who?"

"I -- I don't know their names, my lord." The entire conversation was so familiar Mel's throat was starting to constrict automatically. _I don't want you to harm her._

"Describe them," he demanded, and when Siri obliged without hesitation, Mel felt like she could breathe again.

She caught the healer's eye then and nodded a quick farewell before plucking at Arcade's sleeve to draw him out of the tent with her. "The ranks are about to get thinner," she muttered to him, and started off toward the Brahmin pen. The animals around here were probably much more tolerable than the men.

"Where are you going?" Arcade asked only a little nervously.

"Well, I did promise to check for battle cattle," she said, allowing herself a little chuckle.

He frowned, either because he wasn't reassured or because they were passing a very large gun pointed back toward Hoover Dam. She eyed it with some concern until she realized the men beside it were arguing about whether to find parts to fix it or just melt it down. Good that it wasn't operational now, but probably best to assume that it would be working before the battle. Or to take it as incentive to hurry up and destroy this place.

She was tempted to start the razing immediately when she entered the Brahmin pen and discovered a little girl wearing a miniature version of the public slaves' shift. How had she gotten in here? That rusty gate was too cumbersome for a child to open on her own. When she glanced around, Mel spied the answer, a tattered bedroll in one corner of the enclosure. This was her pen, too. Even the lowliest recruits got a tent and this innocent child was sleeping some six feet away from Brahmin shit.

The girl had noticed her, and was eyeing her warily; her dirt-smudged face was still fairly full, so she couldn't have been here too long, but she had certainly been around long enough to be leery of angry people. Mel looked down at her clenched fists, flattened her hands at her sides, and took a deep breath before she spoke, voice low and gentle. "Hello. Do you speak English?"

She fidgeted nervously. "I can't talk to you. It's not allowed."

Mel took several steps back. "I'm sorry. I don't want you to get into trouble."

"You said sorry. Wow. You're nice." The little girl mulled that over, then darted behind the Brahmin and whispered loudly, "Um ... can you help me?"

Mel's heart twisted, knowing there was likely no meaningful way she could aid this child right now without getting them all killed. Still she asked, "What do you need?"

"Antony took Sergeant Teddy away and gave him to the stinky dogs," came the indignant reply. "I want him back!"

That ... might actually be doable. "Can you tell me what Antony looks like?" It was a long shot -- all the Legionaries probably looked alike from her perspective -- but it'd be good to have something more to go on than the name.

As she'd expected, the child paused before replying, "He has a skinny beard. Mostly look for lotsa stinky dogs, though." She shrugged and offered the Brahmin a handful of maize stalks.

"I'll talk to him." Mel couldn't promise anything more, so she left the girl to her chores and climbed back up the hill, scanning the area for dogs.

From just behind her Arcade hissed incredulously, "Mel, are you seriously going to get involved in --"

"-- in giving a child the barest scrap of comfort while she endures this place?" she shot back, tone ice and iron. "Yes, Arcade, I am."

"We're going to get killed over a teddy bear," he muttered, and since he had been a good friend to her, she pretended she hadn't heard.

"You must be Antony," she said not long afterward to a man with an oddly thin strip of beard, who was indeed surrounded by dogs who left Mel breathing through her mouth.

"Come to see my hounds? Step carefully around them and you might just leave alive."

"Courier, _what_ are you doing here?" Ah, her husband had satisfied his jealousy and caught up with them. He moved right in beside her, all but wrapping an arm around her to declare _hands off, mine_ to the other Legionary.

She had no patience left for any of their posturing and said flatly to Antony, "You took a child's teddy bear. I'd like it back."

He snorted. "The stupid girl should know by now that --"

Mel knew what came next; she'd heard it hundreds of times in training: _Even the rags on your back are a privilege._ She managed not to to roll her eyes at him and started paying attention again just in time to hear him say, "You square off with four of my best dogs. No armor and no weapons except a machete. You survive and I let you have the bear."

She shrugged. She'd fought more at once in Nipton's town hall using only her machete, and the armor she'd had back then barely qualified as such. "Deal."

"You're going to lose those dogs," her husband told Antony in an almost clinical tone.

Antony's only reply was a derisive laugh.

He lost the dogs.

Mel cleaned and stowed her machete, pulled her armor back on -- the more layers between her and the men of this camp, the better -- and returned to the tent near the arena. There she took her little sewing kit out of her bag and carefully mended the punctures in Sergeant Teddy.

"You were doing so well," her husband murmured from just behind her. "They were genuinely impressed. But reminding them you're a woman like this is a serious tactical error."

She didn't even look up from tying off the thread. "Strength and femininity are not mutually exclusive." Oh, he had to hate being unable to slap her for the backtalk.

As good as the fight had felt, returning the bear felt better. "I don't know how long you'll get to keep him," she warned the little girl, "but at least you can hold him right now." It was uncomfortably close to something one of the midwives had told her after Leo's birth, and she was grateful when the child flung her arms around her waist, leaving only the Brahmin's two heads to see a few tears escape. She quickly dashed the back of her hand across her eyes before turning to face her husband with her head up.

It actually took him a moment to mask his anger before he told her stiffly, "If you're finished retrieving children's playthings, Cursor Lucullus will depart soon."

"Excellent."

"And since you seem to enjoy defending foolish girls, I will give you another one to rescue -- a gambler, Martina Groesbeck." He'd chosen his orders well; as much as Mel wanted to ignore him, she couldn't refuse this woman protection from the Omertas.

"I'll see that she's safe." _And far away from all of you, too._

"Good," he said as they arrived at the dock. "Martina frequents the Vault 21 gift shop, on the Strip. Hurry along, and she still may be in one piece by the time you get there. And, Courier?"

"Yes?"

He handed her a small gift box, its pale pink wildly out of place here at the hypermasculine Fort. "Take this. A token of my regard." And then, for once, she got to watch _him_ retreat from _her_.

Arcade waited until her husband was well out of earshot before muttering, "Is it ticking?"

"No," she replied as she stepped onto the raft. "But I'm not opening it now, either."

The passage back across the river was mostly silent, for which Mel was grateful. The adrenaline of the day was wearing off and she was exhausted.

When they returned to the mines house for the night, she closed the door and then immediately gave a ragged sigh and slumped against it. "Oh, God, we did it."

"Yes," Arcade replied tartly, "and I guess I know what you're like on Psycho now, because I can't think of any other reason you'd have gone out of your way to provoke those people. So tell me, how'd you smuggle it in?"

"You've got it backwards. I'd have needed drugs _not_ to be angry there." She considered demanding how he had stayed so docile in the face of all that, but pulled herself up short -- she was guilty of far worse in that department. "Look, let's just get some sleep."

In the morning she was able to tell him, "I'm not sorry for anything I did out there, but I am sorry I worried you," and he was able to reassure her that even though he'd been afraid, he approved of the things she'd done. They made their way back north with their friendship reinforced.

When the Freeside gate came into view, Mel finally decided to open the box. Inside, resting on some dark gray cloth, was an elaborately engraved silver hairpin, the same one she'd used to kill Gurges. At least he'd cleaned it first. Unlike the cloth below it, which was stained -- _oh_. Once she realized what it was, and what was dried on it, Mel snorted, pulled it from the box, and threw it into the trash-barrel fire off to their right.

Arcade cocked his head. "Was that ... a pair of underwear?"

"Yes. Mine. He ... left me a 'token of his regard' on it."

Arcade took a moment to figure out what she meant, then blushed and blurted, "That's disgusting."

"Yes, it is." And then she threw back her head and laughed.

Arcade stared at her, obviously bewildered. "I'm ... not getting the joke here."

"He didn't get his way, and because Caesar still thinks I'm useful, this is all he can do about it. Seeing him reduced to expressing his displeasure in this petty a way is very, very funny indeed." She was sure she was supposed to be intimidated, and she _would_ have to check her room in Novac to make sure he hadn't planted anything dangerous or stolen more than her panties, but his little fit of pique only underscored that, for the first time, she'd won a round. The tide might just be turning. She hummed the rest of the way back to the Lucky 38.


End file.
